Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL) and VERITAS Software Corporation (Nasdaq: VRTS) today announced an expansion of their strategic relationship based upon the development, certification and support of VERITAS' industry-leading storage management and high availability software for Novell's SUSE® LINUX Enterprise Server 9 platform under VERITAS' pre-release software program. VERITAS plans to provide select customers early access to VERITAS Storage Foundation™ High Availability (HA) software on SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 under VERITAS' pre-release software program, with general availability of the product expected in the third quarter of 2005. With the general availability of the 4.1 version of VERITAS Storage Foundation software on Novell's latest Linux platform, VERITAS will provide customers with a greater range of choices for deploying Linux across enterprise IT environments.

"Linux adoption is rapidly gaining traction across the enterprise; greater platform and vendor choice continues to be a central value proposition for VERITAS," said Sanjay Poonen, vice president, Strategic Alliances, VERITAS Software. "VERITAS began supporting the SUSE LINUX platform in 2003. With the latest release of VERITAS' Storage Foundation 4.1 for Linux, VERITAS is asserting that Linux is enterprise-ready and a cost-effective option for meeting today's changing data center requirements."

Building on VERITAS' proven, 15-year track record of innovation, including the development of one of the industry's first UNIX-based volume manager in 1990 and file system in 1991, VERITAS Storage Foundation HA brings together VERITAS Cluster Server, VERITAS Volume Manager and VERITAS File System into an integrated, online storage management and high availability solution for enterprises deploying either UNIX or Linux. With the availability of the Storage Foundation HA software for SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9, VERITAS is extending its storage management and high availability software to the Linux kernel 2.6 platform.

VERITAS Storage Foundation software brings unique capabilities required for mission critical applications of Linux, including storage area network support with dynamic multipathing, online storage management to reduce downtime, high performance file system and database access and a stable, mature code base. VERITAS Volume Manager provides data portability across UNIX and LINUX, with its Portable Data Container utility easing migration between systems. The VERITAS File System enables end users to drive down storage costs by using tiered storage and automatically placing data on the appropriate class of storage. In addition, customers will now realize the performance advantages of 64-bit application support for data intensive Linux environments, with up to 128 TB file systems supported in the 4.1 release.

David Patrick, Novell vice president and general manager of Linux, Open Source Platforms and Services, said, "Novell is delighted to have VERITAS' support of Novell's data center Linux initiatives. Customers who are considering and planning data center migrations from UNIX to Linux will soon be able to confidently deploy the market-leading VERITAS online storage management line of products on the SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 platform."